Blake Lively Claims Justin Baldoni Tried to ‘Eviscerate’ Her Credibility: Lawsuit
Blake Lively filed a federal court lawsuit against Justin Baldoni late Tuesday, alleging in the 93-page complaint that her It Ends With Us director and co-star subjected her to “disturbing” sexual harassment during production and then engaged in a retaliatory campaign designed to “silence” her and “eviscerate” her credibility.
The new suit, filed in the Southern District of New York, also names the movie’s producer, James Heath, as a co-defendant, along with the film’s studio, Wayfarer, the studio’s co-founder Steve Sarowitz, and industry publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel. It alleges the group “engaged in a sophisticated, coordinated, and well-financed” attack plan that planted stories and “weaponized a digital army” against Lively, causing the actress and her family “severe emotional harm.”
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The complaint says fallout from the alleged misconduct “has been extreme.” “There are days when [Lively] has struggled to get out of bed, and she frequently chooses not to venture outside in public,” it claims. “She also has been experiencing repeated and painful physical symptoms as a result of this experience,” while Lively’s husband, actor Ryan Reynolds, “has been affected mentally, physically, and professionally by his wife’s and children’s pain,” the paperwork alleges.
Lively’s new filing followed a week after The New York Times broke the news that Lively had filed a precursor complaint against Baldoni, Heath, Nathan, and Abel with the California Civil Rights Department. The Tuesday lawsuit also dropped within minutes of a separate libel lawsuit filed by Baldoni, Heath, Nathan, and Abel against The Times. In that dueling 87-page complaint, the group alleged The Times recklessly relied on Lively’s “unverified and self-serving narrative” when it published its Dec. 21 story titled: “‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine.”
In a statement, Lively’s attorneys claim the defendants in her new lawsuit are piling on more retribution with their counter-offensive. “Unfortunately, Ms. Lively’s decision to speak out has resulted in further retaliation and attacks. As alleged in Ms. Lively’s federal complaint, Wayfarer and its associates have violated federal and California state law by retaliating against her for reporting sexual harassment and workplace safety concerns. Now, the defendants will answer for their conduct in federal court,” the statement reads.
As part of her new lawsuit, Lively gives detailed descriptions of some of the alleged harassment she purportedly faced on set. The actress claims that during the filming of a slow dance where no sound was recorded, Baldoni improvised a scene where he “leaned forward and slowly dragged his lips from her ear and down her neck as he said, ‘It smells so good.'” Lively alleges Baldoni also tried to add a graphic sex scene where their characters would climax together on their wedding night. She says Baldoni then “intrusively” asked her if she and her husband climax simultaneously during intercourse.
Lively further claims that on the “chaotic” day of filming the scene where her character gives birth, Baldoni and Heath “suddenly pressured” her to simulate full nudity, despite no mention of nudity for the scene in the script. “Mr. Baldoni insisted to Ms. Lively that women give birth naked, and that his wife had ‘ripped her clothes off’ during labor. He claimed it was ‘not normal’ for women to remain in their hospital gowns while giving birth. Ms. Lively disagreed, but felt forced into a compromise that she would be naked from below the chest down,” the lawsuit states.
According to her lawsuit, Lively only agreed to resume filming It Ends With Us in early 2024 after she and Reynolds attended a meeting in New York that concerned the project’s purportedly “hostile” work environment and a series of requested safeguards. (Filming had been suspended since June 2023 due to overlapping strikes by the unions representing Hollywood writers and actors.)
“No more showing nude videos or images of women, including producer’s wife, to BL and/or her employees,” read one demand listed in the lawsuit. “No more mention of Mr. Baldoni’s or Mr. Heath’s previous ‘pornography addiction’ or BL’s lack of pornography consumption to BL or to other crew members,” read another. On the list of 30 demands, No. 13 read: “No more improvising of kissing. … No biting or sucking of lip with BL consent.” No. 27 read: “No more adding sex scenes, oral sex, or on-camera climaxing by BL outside the scope of the script BL approved when signing onto the project.”
According to the complaint, the meeting was an “essential step” in the process that led Lively back to the movie’s set on Jan. 5, 2024. Filming concluded on Feb. 9, and Lively promoted the project in accordance with a pre-determined marketing plan created by Sony, the film’s distributor, the lawsuit states. That plan, according to the complaint, stated Lively should focus more on her character’s “strength and resilience” than the film’s underlying story of domestic violence.
Lively alleges that Baldoni unilaterally “pivoted” away from the publicity plan as he purportedly began fearing reports of the alleged sexual harassment during filming would leak out. She claims he began promoting domestic violence “survivor content” to protect his public image as people started noticing some of the film’s cast had unfollowed him on social media.
When Lively started facing backlash online — some of it accusing her of being “tone deaf” with her more upbeat promotion of the film — she took notice. “The social media accounts for Ms. Lively’s brands— including Betty Buzz and Betty Booze—were flooded by hateful comments, which began to echo through other social and traditional media outlets,” the lawsuit states.
Lively claims in her lawsuit that the blowback was far from authentic. She alleges Baldoni and Heath worked in concert with Nathan, Abel, and others to “create, seed and promote” content damaging to Lively and then “feed pieces of this manufactured content to unwitting reporters, making content go viral in order to influence public opinion and thereby cause an organic pile-on.”
In the lawsuit, Lively includes screenshots of alleged communications between Baldoni and the crisis team from around the time the movie premiered. In one exchange on Aug. 2, 2024, Abel purportedly told Nathan that Baldoni “wants to feel like [Lively] can be buried.” Nathan allegedly responded: “We can’t write it down to him. We can’t write we will destroy her. …Imagine if a document saying all the things that he wants ends up in the wrong hands.” In another message, Nathan allegedly wrote, “You know we can bury anyone.”
The suit claims that a few days later on Aug. 5, Baldoni sent Abel a screenshot of a thread on X that accused model and cosmetics entrepreneur Hailey Bieber of bullying women. Mr. Baldoni allegedly stated, “This is what we would need.” Per the suit, Abel purportedly replied, “Yes I literally just spoke to Melissa about this on the break about what we discussed last night for social and digital. Focus on reddit, TikTok, IG.”
In their lawsuit filed against The Times, Abel and Nathan say their “complete communications” demonstrate they had no intention of “destroying” or “burying” Lively through aggressive tactics. They claim it’s “categorically false” that they planted a negative story in the Daily Mail titled “Is Blake Lively set to be CANCELLED?”
In a screenshot of an alleged message sent on Aug. 16 in response to the Daily Mail article, Nathan wrote, “Damn this is unfair because it’s also not me. Everything now looks like it’s me.” The libel lawsuit claims the use of an emoji in another seemingly incriminating text exchange indicated one message was intended as “sarcasm,” not truth. “Any negative press about Lively was unequivocally a consequence of her own actions,” their lawsuit states.
In a statement Tuesday, Bryan Freedman, the lawyer representing Baldoni, Heath, Nathan, and Abel, said it was Lively who conducted a “vicious smear campaign,” and that The Times published her account because Lively and Reynolds are beloved Hollywood elites. A spokeswoman for The Times disputed this.
“The role of an independent news organization is to follow the facts where they lead,” Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades said in statement sent to Rolling Stone. “Our story was meticulously and responsibly reported. It was based on a review of thousands of pages of original documents, including the text messages and emails that we quote accurately and at length in the article. To date, Wayfarer Studios, Mr. Baldoni, the other subjects of the article and their representatives have not pointed to a single error. We published their full statement in response to the allegations in the article as well.”
Lively’s lawsuit, meanwhile, argues that her complaints about the alleged sexual harassment constituted protected activity, so any coordinated campaign to cast her in a false light would be unlawful. Her filing alleges the defendants carried out such actions knowingly and maliciously, so she should be entitled to real and punitive damages. Lively’s complaint doesn’t list an amount but says it should be enough to “punish” the defendants “and to discourage future wrongful conduct.”
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